Pics and Commentary

As things warm up and start looking lively around here, I borrowed a digital camera and took pictures of some of the things that are doing well around here.
First off, the first forget-me-not of spring:
I have no idea why that picture came out with slightly odd colours, but it did. A couple of days later I took another pic, this time of a whole patch of them:
The periwinkle are doing well too, though I'm going to have to build up the soil there and plant some more (they're meant to be acting as groundcover under a large maple that has proven deadly to everything else we've tried there):
(These were taken at sunset, hence the odd streaking of light.)
At the same time, we have two tulips out:
These two are, apparently, on a totally different schedule from the rest of our tulips. Everywhere else the tulips have either not come up (thank you, small rodents, we presume that was your work), or are down to straggly foliage. But these two are just now opening.
Most of the rest of the garden and lawn is still just getting going, though some of the herbs are doing extraordinarily well. We have tarragon, and oregano, and sage, all roughly where we want them, and mint, which has decided it does not like its bed and is going to come up through the grass this year. It makes for a pleasant scent when I'm mowing, at least. I've also bought some thyme, which will hopefully be able to go in the garden after this weekend. We have rain and cold nights forecast (planting weekend is the 24th of May around here), so it'll be coming in as needed for a bit yet. It looks strong, though; I bought it on the basis that it's already big enough to harvest, and a better investment than yet another little bundle of cut thyme for tonight's dinner.
The chives are insane, however. One bunch of them is acting perfectly normally, growing in their pot on the porch, hanging out with the dead stuff we still need to pull from that pot, doing as expected. The patch in the garden, however, skipped right to trying to bloom, which we weren't expecting it to do for a month or two. I've clipped the stalks with flowers on the end, and hopefully that'll slow it down until summer gets here.
And, of course, there are pleasant things coming up unexpectedly all over the place:
Strawberries! Again, we blame the wildlife. It's in a kind of wild corner of the garden, though, so I think we'll leave it.
These little guys pop up all over the place (this one's right on the edge of a bed), including through the lawn.
Two kinds of ground phlox, which are not where I expected them to pop up, but which are close enough to be left alone. The grass-like stuff in there is not (according to my Mom) our lawn creeping in, but some other kind of flower which will bloom later on.
The most pervasive of the returning plants is still goutweed, but I continue to wage my battle against it. The patch that likes to try to choke our air conditioner from behind has been temporarily defeated, at least, and now looks like this:
Your move, goutweed. Your move.